


Chipped

by Ceil



Category: Beetlejuice - All Media Types, Beetlejuice - Perfect/Brown & King
Genre: Angst, F/M, Family, First Meetings, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Injury
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-19
Updated: 2020-05-19
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:42:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24273010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ceil/pseuds/Ceil
Summary: Delia and Charles’ first-ever meeting was…unconventional. And involved a little blood.How the grieving widow met the bubbly life coach and kicked off the whole drama, featuring the (not so friendly) Neighborhood Pie Lady.
Relationships: Charles Deetz & Delia Deetz, Charles Deetz & Lydia Deetz, Charles Deetz/Delia Deetz, Charles Deetz/Emily Deetz
Comments: 9
Kudos: 27





	Chipped

**Author's Note:**

> TRIGGER WARNING for a bloody wrist injury. 
> 
> I borrowed a pyramid Delia-ism from @lesbian-deetz on Tumblr, so shout out to them!

To say Delia was bored of her job would be an understatement so large, it bordered on an outright lie.

The former model and aspiring life coach had bopped from gig to gig post-divorce while spreading the word of her guru Otho, but she still had to pay the bills somehow. And that’s how she ended up working a day job in a store, checking in and shelving new shipments of glassware for rich housewives.

Not exactly her favorite thing in the world, but hey. Money was money.

Otho told her she was merely passing through a “cold season,” which was some of the only encouragement she had to cling to. 

“To live a life of love, my disciple, you must commit to loving life!” he’d say as she listened over the phone, enraptured. “And also recruit six to ten more followers.”

Delia tried. She really did. She talked to everyone she could about her beloved guru’s way of living, getting called every name in the book and once even being accused of something called a “pyramid scheme.” (“But they don’t even build pyramids anymore!” she tried to argue, to no avail.)

It seemed like everyone else was already living full lives though. Nobody wanted to be life coached. Especially not her boss, Karen Brown.

Karen was as straight-laced and “normal” as her name would suggest. She wore a version of the same blue flowered frock every day. She lived her life according to the orderly and ordinary. And she was _obsessed_ with store-bought pies.

Delia wouldn’t have cared much, but Karen made no effort to hide her dislike of Delia or her eccentricities.

“You’re really wearing that?” she’d greet her almost every day, eyeing Delia’s crystal pendant necklaces.

“Yes! Yes, I am,” Delia would reply, almost always mistaking the greeting as genuine interest. “Amethyst promotes healing and balances the crown chakra, which interestingly enough is very good for energy because—”

“Mmm. Yes,” her boss would cut her off disapprovingly, looking her up and down.

“I found it at a shop last week. Part of the proceeds go to char-ity!”

“Well then, it’s almost as if you’re an adult, isn’t it?”

Some jabs went over Delia’s head. Delia would roll her eyes at others she caught, but sometimes when she’d return home alone to her empty apartment after Karen made her work double shifts—and she realized that hearing her boss’ passive aggressive comments were the only times she’d spoken to another person that week—it was tough not to cry.

At least the loveliness of the store items helped a little. Today, it was a brand new shipment of pristine black and white wine glasses from France that caught Delia’s eye.

Truthfully, they were more than Delia could afford. (She’d recently paid this quarter’s four-figure membership dues she owed Otho as his disciple. A bargain, in her mind!) So no, she couldn’t exactly buy the wine glasses, but she still admired the craftsmanship, the detail, the _design_.

“What we cannot buy, we can always _eye_ ,” she recalled Otho saying. Even if she could never drink out of something so beautiful, she could still hold it, right? She perked up, the glasses bringing her happiness, until she spied a customer who made her do a double take.

He was tall and burly and currently looking at water bottles stacked in the front display. And he might have been the most beautiful person Delia had ever seen.

He was unlike any of the unapproachable perfectionists who typically browsed the store, and she immediately felt both hot and cold and nervous all over, drawn to him before even getting a clear view. It was like he was a magnet pulling her in, and she felt helpless against it.

“Maybe this was meant to be,” a voice unlike her own entered her head.

Delia decided to go say hello. Just one hello. Maybe he needed help finding something! 

“Stop chatting with customers, Schlimmer. They only indulge because they feel bad for you, and that’s bad for business,” Karen’s words crossed her mind and she briefly, physically recoiled, hiding behind a stack of boxes.

God, she was so dumb to think that maybe…

“If you don’t take a chance, you don’t have a chance, because you didn’t take it,” Otho’s words echoed in her head, offering a more positive counterpoint. She could work with that.

She was surprised by how anxious she felt. Delia was a lot of things, and “blindingly confident” usually made the list, so this was certainly strange and unusual.

“Just say hello,” she muttered aloud to herself, frustrated and a little bewildered by her own lack of nerve.

She resolved to say hi, tension be damned, but in her haste she missed the full box of glasses right in front of her.

Her foot caught the edge of the box, propelling her forward with a surprised squeal. The indisputable sound of glass shattering into crystalline fragments echoed through the building.

Before his head snapped up at the sound, Charles had been browsing after going to the store…for some reason. If he were honest, he had no clue what he was looking for. But he needed a moment away from the heavy fog of grief in the house and the accusatory glares Lydia burned into him every time he dodged her very direct, very painful questions.

So he went somewhere Emily used to go sometimes, hoping for…something. A breather? A present for Lydia? A sign? He didn’t know, but he wasn’t overthinking it.

As he was musing over whether or not Lydia would accept an overpriced glass as a sort of peace offering, the sound of glass breaking behind him made his head snap up, and he took in the store worker who was now sprawled on the ground near the wine glasses. Clearly, she had tripped over the box.

He actually recognized her.

Emily had once told him about a darling redheaded woman who worked at the store and radiated positivity. His beloved deceased and the redhead had only met briefly, it seemed. But the thought of that flew out of his mind, not to be realized or revisited again, at the sight of blood on Delia’s wrist.

Karen the store manager stormed up to her, but instead of helping Delia to her feet like Charles expected, she bent down to the box of glasses.

“You ruined three of them!” she said bitterly after looking the box over with rapt attention, not sparing a second glance at Delia, who sat herself up on the ground. “This is coming out of your paycheck Schlimmer!”

The negligence was too much for Charles to handle.

“My God,” Charles interrupted them, marching over and kneeling down to come face to face with Delia. “Are you okay?” He could barely see the skin of her wrist through the dark blood bubbling up around the thick wound, a visible shard of glass still wedged in it. It did not look good.

Delia nodded, her smile tight and eyes woozy. The effect of Karen’s yelling hadn’t really left her face.

Charles took her uninjured hand and helped her to her feet.

“Yes! Yes, I’m perfectly fine,” Delia said, oscillating slightly on her feet. Charles gently reached out an arm to steady her.

“Your hand doesn’t look good dear.” The term of endearment slipped out completely without his permission.

“Totally completely fine—“ Delia said.

And she pitched forward, knees buckling in a dead faint into his arms.

The next five minutes were a bit of a blur for Charles.

He went from indifferently browsing overpriced stemware to holding onto a stranger for dear life. A beautiful stranger at that, but he didn’t really dwell on it, her mangled wrist drawing the bulk of his attention.

“Oh for Christ’s sake,” Karen said huffily. “Delia! Enough with the theatrics, Delia!”

Charles was holding Delia up, but that didn’t stop Karen from roughly grabbing her shoulder and shaking it, to his great displeasure. He pulled Delia out of her reach and closer to himself.

“Focus woman, we have to focus!” he said sharply to the store manager.

“Just bring her to the stock room, she can stay there until she learns—“

“We can’t do nothing, do you understand? She needs someone to help her.”

That shut Karen up.

Charles shifted Delia and swooped up her legs into a bridal hold, grunting slightly. Delia’s head lolled back against him.

“Get your car right now, we are going to the hospital.”

“Sir, we do not close until—“

“ _We are going to the hospital, end of discussion_.”

His “dad voice,” as Lydia called it, seemed to do the trick. Charles could be kind of a pushover sometimes, but he wasn’t taking any chances with the woman he was cradling, who was alarmingly still.

Karen relented, but Charles didn’t really let himself breathe until a few minutes later, when Karen was cruising them down the street toward the emergency room.

The woman in his arms began to stir, and all other thoughts and feelings left his mind.

Her eyes fluttered slightly, opening a crack to the sight of a complete stranger clutching her body, arm gripping her injured wrist to stop the bleeding as best he could around the glass.

Charles thought she might cry, or freak out, or scream at the sight of waking to a total stranger tightly holding her in the backseat of an unfamiliar car.

But she caught him off guard.

Instead, Delia’s eyes focused briefly, locking with his, and she gave him a very small, very relieved, genuine little smile.

Charles’ eyes softened instantly, for the first time in months. And he melted.

“We’re going to the hospital,” he said softly, as if raising his voice would spook her. “You’re going to be just fine. I promise.”

Instead of answering, she merely sighed and nestled herself further into his embrace. They fit together well, her head tucked gently under his chin, her body pressed next to his, and her legs curled over his lap.

Charles hadn’t actually held anyone since Emily had passed. Not even his own daughter, to his own great shame. And Delia hadn’t been held in _years_.

So they each closed their eyes and indulged in the rare comfort. Charles couldn’t bring himself to be vulnerable with Lydia quite yet. But maybe he could learn to lean into this brief special moment, with this special person who seemed to want to lean in too. 

This special person named Delia, as he soon found out. Once they arrived at the hospital and the quick help of doctors worked wonders on her, Delia and Charles properly introduced themselves as she sat in a paper-thin gown, wrist wrapped in gauze. 

Immediately, it was like opening the floodgates. Delia had all the words in the world to color the hour, the minute, and the second, which was music to Charles’ ears after living in near-complete silence for far too long. And Charles didn’t just listen but _listen_ , giving Delia his somewhat spellbound attention, the likes of which she’d never actually had in life. It only made her blossom more.

Charles couldn’t remember ever meeting someone so bubbly, so full of optimism and quirk and zest and _life_. As Delia told him all about her life and thanked him profusely, he sat enraptured. Of course she was a life coach. It made complete sense in his mind.

He listened to her chatter on, captivated, but when the clock ticked by and it became awkwardly clear that it was time for him to go (Karen was beyond ready to get a move on, and she was kind of his ride now), he still hesitated.

“Would you, uh–“ he said, Delia silencing herself at his rare interjection. “Would you maybe…”

Was he about to ask her on a date? A coffee? A business lunch? Charles himself didn’t know, but the sheer idea of taking interest in someone else so soon after Emily’s death instantly filled him with self-hatred.

Until suddenly, it all clicked. He was stupid to consider asking Delia on a date! That’s not why he was feeling these obnoxious feelings! She was a life coach. _That’s_ why he was so drawn to her. Because she could help his daughter! Totally! Right!

“Would you want to life coach my daughter?” he asked.

At first, he thought he said something stupid. Damn him for not working up the nerve to actually face his feel—

Delia’s face bloomed into a grin. “I would _love_ that.”

“Lydia needs someone to help her get past all of this. And think _positive_!”

“I am *very* good at that!”

Charles chucked fondly. “I can tell.”

When he finally got home and told Lydia, he thought her eyes were going to pop out of her skull, they went so wide and cartoonish. But it was worth it. Even in her fury, Lydia still spoke to him more that day than she had in a week.

And later that night when he returned home to Google “what exactly do life coaches actually do," to his great shock he realized that for the first time in weeks, he actually felt an emotion that day that wasn’t pure unadulterated grief.

He could get used to “thinking positive” after all.

**Author's Note:**

> For some reason I headcanon that Emily and Delia met once and had a nice encounter, but it was so brief and forgettable that nobody’s connected the dots. Also IDK why I can’t get through one story without Delia in some kinda trouble, but here we are!
> 
> I’ve been really stuck with writing lately, but feedback is hella motivating, so anything you comment will be heard & appreciated <3


End file.
